ABSTRACT Individuals suffering from depression show diminished facial responses to positive stimuli. Recent cognitive research suggests that depressed individuals may appraise emotional stimuli differently than do nondepressed persons. Prior studies do not indicate whether depressed individuals respond differently when they encounter positive stimuli that are difficult to avoid. The authors investigated dynamic responses of individuals varying in both history of major depressive disorder (MDD) and current depressive symptomatology (N = 116) to robust positive stimuli. The Facial Action Coding System (Ekman & Friesen, 1978) was used to measure affect-related responses to a comedy clip. Participants reporting current depressive symptomatology were more likely to evince affect-related shifts in expression following the clip than were those without current symptomatology. This effect of current symptomatology emerged even when the contrast focused only on individuals with a history of MDD. Specifically, persons with current depressive symptomatology were more likely than those without current symptomatology to control their initial smiles with negative affect-related expressions. These findings suggest that integration of emotion science and social cognition may yield important advances for understanding depression.

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Impact of Depression on Response to Comedy:A Dynamic Facial Coding AnalysisLawrence Ian Reed, Michael A. Sayette, and Jeffrey F. CohnUniversity of PittsburghIndividuals suffering from depression show diminished facial responses to positive stimuli. Recentcognitive research suggests that depressed individuals may appraise emotional stimuli differently than donondepressed persons. Prior studies do not indicate whether depressed individuals respond differentlywhen they encounter positive stimuli that are difficult to avoid. The authors investigated dynamicresponses of individuals varying in both history of major depressive disorder (MDD) and currentdepressive symptomatology (N ? 116) to robust positive stimuli. The Facial Action Coding System(Ekman & Friesen, 1978) was used to measure affect-related responses to a comedy clip. Participantsreporting current depressive symptomatology were more likely to evince affect-related shifts in expres-sion following the clip than were those without current symptomatology. This effect of current symp-tomatology emerged even when the contrast focused only on individuals with a history of MDD.Specifically, persons with current depressive symptomatology were more likely than those withoutcurrent symptomatology to control their initial smiles with negative affect-related expressions. Thesefindings suggest that integration of emotion science and social cognition may yield important advancesfor understanding depression.Keywords: depression, facial expression, facial coding, comedyRecent years have seen increased interest in applying affectivescience research to the study of emotional disorders (Davidson,2000). With respect to depression, research has examined howindividuals with mood disorders respond to positive and negativestimuli (Gehricke & Shapiro, 2000). Such interest relates to earlybehavioral approaches for treating depression that focused onmodifying one’s environment to create more rewarding experi-ences (i.e., opportunities to increase positive affect; Lewinsohn &Graf, 1973). This reasoning rests on the assumption that whenconfronted with “positive” cues, depressed individuals will re-spond appropriately. This assumption may not, however, be en-tirely accurate.Researchers using electromyography and facial coding tech-niques have examined responses to stimuli intended to elicit pos-itive emotion among individuals suffering from depression andnondepressed controls. Typically, these studies expose participantsto stimuli that have reliably elicited positive affect in healthyparticipants (e.g., Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1999). Followingstimulus presentation, immediate responses are recorded. Thesestudies find that individuals suffering from depression or dyspho-ria are less likely than healthy controls to react to positive stimuliwith facial expressions associated with positive emotion (Gehricke& Shapiro, 2000; Schwartz et al., 1976; Sloan, Bradley, Dimoulas,& Lang, 2002), suggesting a diminished ability among affectedpersons to experience positive emotion.With few exceptions (Sloan et al., 2002), prior research hasassessed emotional reactions to positive stimuli without investi-gating the development of the expression over time. In addition tothe morphology or configuration of these expressions, dynamicaspects of the facial movement provide information about thestrength of the emotion and whether it is genuine (Ekman, 1993).More important, a facial expression of emotion may be composedof expressions occurring in a rapid sequence, conveying an emo-tional experience different from what is conveyed by each separateexpression in the sequence (Ekman, 1993). Regarding depression,an example might be a smile control. According to Keltner (1995),smile controls involve facial actions that potentially counteract theupward pull of the smile and/or obscure the smile. Accordingly,researchers have begun to investigate these dynamic aspects ofemotional expression. Analysis of motion when viewing facialexpressions, for example, improves affect judgments. Specifically,subtle facial expressions were identifiable when presented in dy-namic displays, but not in static displays (Ambadar, Schooler, &Cohn, 2005). This research dovetails with prior work revealingthat displays of embarrassment and amusement can be distin-guished by examining temporal differences in their configurations(Keltner & Buswell, 1997).This basic research, which highlights the importance of dynamicmeasures of facial expression, may prove useful for advancingknowledge regarding mechanisms underlying depression. Asnoted above, clinical investigations document that persons withdepression or dysphoria, on average, are less likely than nonde-pressed individuals to express positive affect when presented withLawrence Ian Reed, Michael A. Sayette, and Jeffrey F. Cohn, Depart-ment of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh.This research was supported in part by National Institute of MentalHealth Grants P01 MH056193 and R01 MH051435. We thank Ellen Frank,Charles George, and Karen Schmidt for their helpful comments. Rachel M.Levenstein and Kasey M. Griffin provided assistance with FACS coding.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Law-rence Ian Reed, Department of Psychology, 4315 Sennott Square, Univer-sity of Pittsburgh, 210 S. Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. E-mail:lirst6@pitt.eduJournal of Abnormal Psychology2007, Vol. 116, No. 4, 804–809Copyright 2007 by the American Psychological Association0021-843X/07/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0021-843X.116.4.804804

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positive-mood inductions. Nevertheless, this mean difference doesnot eliminate the possibility that some depressed participantswithin the group still might display positive emotional reactions. Itis possible that in addition to a diminished ability to experiencepositive affect, there also exists an active suppression of positiveaffect in individuals suffering from depression. A primary aim ofthe present study was to examine how individuals with a history ofdepression (specifically major depressive disorder; MDD) whoeither were or were not currently suffering from depressive symp-tomatology respond to positive stimuli when positive responses aredifficult to avoid.Although not without debate (cf. Block & Colvin, 1994; Taylor& Brown, 1994), there is some evidence that individuals withdepression differ from those without depression in the way theyprocess self-relevant information. Nondepressed individuals ap-pear to hold self-serving biases that buffer their perceptions andappraisals in ways that enhance their self-concept (Taylor &Brown, 1988). Moreover, when emotion information that is incon-gruent with their self-concept cannot be avoided, there may beways that this information is marginalized (Taylor & Brown,1988). In contrast, people suffering from depression may processinformation about the self more negatively than do their nonde-pressed counterparts (Abramson & Alloy, 1981; Golin, Terrell,Weitz, & Drost, 1979). These studies suggest that depression mayalter the way that positive information is appraised, even when itcannot be avoided.Consistent with this position, recent work using a dot-probe tasksuggests that individuals experiencing depression have difficultydisengaging from negative stimuli. Gotlib, Krasnoperova, Yue,and Joorman (2004) investigated attentional biases for sad facespresented for varying lengths of time. Results suggested thatdifferences in stimulus duration may distinguish between initialorientation and maintenance of responses. Their findings furthersuggest that measuring affective responses dynamically will per-mit examination of subtle shifts in affect over brief time intervalsthat may characterize the reactions of individuals suffering fromdepression.In order to capture such momentary shifts in emotion, we usedan observational coding system to identify facial expressionsthought to be related to emotion (see Ekman & Rosenberg, 2005).The most comprehensive of these coding systems is the FacialAction Coding System (FACS; Cohn & Ekman, 2005). FACS is ananatomically based system for measuring facial movement. UsingFACS, coders can code all possible facial displays—referred to asaction units (AUs) (Ekman & Friesen, 1978; Ekman, Friesen, &Hager, 2002)—in order to provide an objective and reliablemethod of measuring facial behavior over extremely rapid timeframes. Thus, use of FACS to examine responses to emotion cuescan provide key information that otherwise could go unnoticed ifrelying exclusively on self-report measures. It is hypothesized thatthese momentary shifts will be expressed in the face by initialpositive affect-related expressions, immediately followed by ex-pressions of negative emotion in dysphoric individuals.Previous studies also have used affect inductions that tended notto reliably induce positive affect in depressed individuals. Forexample, Gehricke and Shapiro (2000) reported mean happinessratings of less than 3 on a 0–9 scale. (More important, these lowratings were consistent with the aim of that study, which was notdesigned to examine expressions immediately following an initialpositive response.) In contrast, the present study required a stim-ulus that would be especially effective in eliciting an immediatepositive response, even among persons experiencing symptoms ofdepression. Prior studies examining the effect of depression onpositive affect have not been able to determine whether difficultyresponding to positive stimuli reflects a stable characteristic ofindividuals with depression, or instead signals current depressivesymptomatology. By including groups of individuals with (a) ahistory of MDD and current depressive symptomatology, (b) ahistory of MDD without current depressive symptomatology, and(c) no history of MDD (or other psychopathology) and no currentdepressive symptomatology, we aimed to test the importance ofcurrent depressive symptomatology versus general vulnerability toMDD in responding to positive stimuli. Such an effort required asample that included individuals with a history of MDD who eitherwere currently symptomatic or currently asymptomatic.In summary, this study tested the impact of a history of MDD,as well as current depressive symptomatology, on emotional re-sponses to a stimulus designed to induce positive emotion. Byusing a robust positive stimulus, a sensitive and dynamic measureof facial behavior, and by recruiting relatively large samples ofindividuals with a history of MDD who were and who were notcurrently symptomatic, this study aimed to observe a more com-plex and dynamic pattern of emotion responding than found inprior studies. We hypothesized that participants with a history ofMDD and currently symptomatic would be more likely to controltheir smiles with particular negative expressions after hearing thepunch line of a comedy clip than would currently asymptomaticindividuals.MethodParticipantsParticipants who enrolled prior to May 2003 in a longitudinal,multidisciplinary program project examining risk factors forchildhood-onset mood disorders (see Miller et al., 2002) wereeligible for the present study. The present study focused on asubset (67.1%; n ? 116: 30 men, 86 women) of this sample whosmiled in response to a comedy clip (see the Procedures sectionfor additional details). Included in the sample were individualswith a history of MDD and individuals without a history ofpsychopathology. Diagnostic information concerning history ofdepression was obtained via the Structured Clinical Interview forDSM–IV Patient Version (First, Spitzer, Gibbon, & Williams,1994), adapted to include childhood diagnoses. To be classifiedwith a history of MDD, individuals had to receive a diagnosis ofthis disorder using Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of MentalDisorders, 3rd edition (DSM–III; American Psychiatric Associa-tion, 1980), the 3rd edition revised (DSM–III–R; American Psy-chiatric Association, 1987), or the 4th edition (DSM–IV; AmericanPsychiatric Association, 1994) criteria before entering the study.Current depressive symptomatology was ascertained prior to filmclip viewing (described in the Procedures section) using the BeckDepression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Steer, & Farbin, 1988). Follow-ing guidelines for the BDI cut-off scores, distributed by The Centerfor Cognitive Therapy, current depressive symptomatology wasdefined as a BDI score ? 18, which corresponds to a moderate tosevere level of depressive symptomatology (Beck et al., 1988).805DEPRESSION AND RESPONSE TO COMEDY

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More details on the recruitment and diagnosis determination pro-cedure are found in Miller et al. (2002).To examine the effects of history of MDD and current symp-tomatology, participants were divided into three groups: (a) thosewith a history of MDD who were currently symptomatic (history? current; n ? 18), (b) those with a history of MDD who were notcurrently symptomatic (history no current; n ? 39), and (c) thosewithout a history of psychopathology who were not currentlysymptomatic (no history no current; n ? 59). (Because there wasonly one individual in the project with elevated BDI scores butwithout a history of MDD, this fourth group was omitted.) Thedistribution of gender in each group was similar (74% female, 26%male), as was ethnicity (80% Caucasian, 16% African American,4% “other”; ps ? .10). There were no group differences regardinggender or race (ps ? .10). Significant group differences werefound in age, F(2, 113) ? 4.36, p ? .015 (see Table 1). Age,therefore, was included as a covariate in data analyses.ProceduresParticipants were seated comfortably in a chair and asked tomake ratings on a series of film clips varying in emotional content.Each participant then independently viewed a neutral film clip(showing a train moving down a track), followed by a comedy clip,and then followed by five other clips that are not included in thisstudy. The comedy clip was of the contemporary comedian ChrisRock, entitled “Chris Rock: Bring the Pain,” selected on the basisof criteria outlined by Gross and Levenson (1995) to reliably elicitpositive emotion. In this segment, Rock discusses a range of topicssuch as food and relationships. We used the first 11 s of this 4-minclip, which builds up to a clear, initial punch line. This resulted ina stimulus that is well suited for assessing responses, as partici-pants generally are in a neutral state at the start of the 11-ssegment. Because responses to this segment of the comedy clip arethe focus of this article, the remaining film clips are not described.Video recordings of the participants’ facial behavior were digitizedfor 11 s at 30 frames per second, which produced a set of 330sequential 640 ? 480 pixel full color images for each participant.The 11-s segment digitized for each participant began precisely 1 sbefore the punch line and ended 10 s after the punch line. Thelength of this digitized sequence allowed for analysis of sponta-neous smiles that are similar in length to the average 4–6 sreported for spontaneous smiles (Frank, Ekman, & Friesen, 1993).FACS coding.The FACS (Ekman et al., 2002) was used tomeasure facial behavior. To become a certified FACS coder, onemust complete a standardized exam and attain an agreement ratioof at least .70 with criteria. This reliability has been shown togeneralize to research settings in which spontaneous emotion isassessed (Sayette, Cohn, Wertz, Perrott, & Parrott, 2001).FACS coding for the specified 11-s segment for smiles (asdefined by movement of the zygomatic major muscle: AU 12) wascompleted by Lawrence Ian Reed (blind to history and symptom-atology of participants). A number of different lower facial AUsappearing following smile onsets have been identified as reflectingsmile controls (see Keltner, 1995). As noted by others (Ekman,Friesen, & O’Sullivan, 1988), these AUs putatively modify themeaning of the smile expression, such that the overall experiencemay shift from reflecting joy to something different (Keltner &Buswell, 1997). Smile controls are often low-frequency expres-sions, and for the purpose of this study, we examined candidateAUs that were present at least 10 times. These included move-ments corresponding to contempt (“dimplers” AU 14) and sadness(“lip corner depressors” AU 15; see Figure 1). Thus, the presenceof a smile control (the appearance of either AU14 or AU15 duringthe smile) was dichotomously coded for each participant. Follow-ing Keltner (1995), these expressions were coded immediatelyfollowing smile onset. Smile controls were only coded if theyoccurred before smile offset (following Ekman et al., 1988).Twenty percent of the participants were independently coded by acomparison coder certified in FACS and quantified using kappa,which corrects for chance agreement. Reliability for coding ofsmile controls was acceptable (? ? .73).Self-reported affect.Following both the neutral and happyfilm clips, self-reported happiness ratings were recorded for eachparticipant on a 9-point Likert-type scale. (Although less relevantto the present study’s aims, four other emotion terms—sadness,anger, disgust, and fear ratings—were included in the project.)Table 1Age, Self-Report, and Behavioral Findings by GroupGroupNo history nocurrent(n ? 59)HistoryNo current (n ? 39) Current (n ? 18)M SDM SDM SDAgeSelf-reportBDIHappiness ratingNeutral clipComedy clipBehavioralSmile control26.63a5.39 24.08b3.48 24.00a,b4.512.63a3.097.67b5.16 27.11c7.642.95a6.00a2.071.631.68b5.44a1.832.021.41b4.76a1.502.3110%a15%a50%bNote.or omission by the participant, happiness ratings were missing for 3 participants for the neutral clip and 5 forthe comedy clip. The Group ? Clip interaction regarding happiness ratings was not significant, p ? .50, F(2,105) ? 0.71. Means with nonoverlapping superscripts differ significantly at p ? .05 by Bonferroni correction.Current symptoms defined as a Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) score ? 18. Due to technical reasons806REED, SAYETTE, AND COHN

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ResultsPositive Affect InductionWe first examined whether the comedy clip was effective ineliciting positive reactions (i.e., the occurrence of smiles) across allthree groups of participants. The majority (67.1%) of participantsacross the three groups expressed smiles during the clip. Thispercentage was similar among the three groups (58.1% historycurrent, 66.1% history no current, and 71.1% no history no cur-rent), ?2(2, N ? 173) ? 1.77, p ? .41.Self-reported happiness ratings reinforced the FACS findings.[Due to technical reasons or omission by the participant, happinessratings were missing for 3 participants for the neutral clip and 5 forthe comedy clip.] More specifically, a 3 (group) ? 2 (ratingfollowing neutral vs. following comedy clip) mixed ANOVArevealed a main effect for clip, such that participants in all threegroups reported significantly more happiness following the com-edy clip, F(1, 105) ? 136.18, p ? .001. A main effect of groupalso was observed, with participants in the no-history-no-currentgroup reporting being happiest, F(2, 105) ? 9.61, p ? .001. Therewas no Group ? Clip interaction (see Table 1). The effect ofwatching the comedy clip on happiness was comparable in eachgroup. Endorsement of negative emotion during the neutral andcomedy clips was extremely low. On a 0–8 Likert-type scale, allbut 2 of the 24 mean scores were less than 1.0; the highest wasonly 1.18.In summary, FACS coding and self-report measures both sug-gested that the comedy clip was successful in providing a reliablemanipulation of positive affect across the three groups.Shifts in Affect-Related ExpressionsUsing age as a covariate, a logistic regression model contrastingthe likelihood of observing a smile control in the three groupsrevealed a significant effect for group, ?2(2, N ? 116) ? 11.71,p ? .003. The effect of age was not significant, ?2(1, N ? 116) ?0.13, p ? .72.By comparing the history-no-current group with the no-history-no-current group, we were able to contrast the effects of history ofMDD among those not currently symptomatic. Results indicatedthat history-no-current individuals were no more likely to evince asmile control than no-history-no-current participants (? ? ?0.42,p ? .51).By comparing the history ? current group with the history-no-current group, we were able to contrast the effects of currentsymptomatology among individuals with a history of MDD. his-tory ? current in comparison with history no current were morelikely to use smile controls (? ? 1.71, p ? .009). The correspond-ing odds ratio was 5.50, which suggests that history ? currentparticipants were 5.5 times more likely to show a smile control.Point biserial correlations revealed that smile controls wererelated to the BDI (r ? .32, p ? .001) as well as to self-reportratings of sadness (r ? .23, p ? .018) and disgust (r ? .21, p ?.025) following the comedy clip. Smile controls were unrelated toself-report ratings of positive affect (r ? ?.14, p ? .16) followingthe comedy clip.DiscussionThe major finding of this study was that among individuals witha history of MDD, those with current depressive symptomatologywere more likely than were asymptomatic individuals to expresssmile controls during smiles. More specifically, individuals withboth a history of MDD and current depressive symptomatologywere more likely to express smile controls during smiles than wereindividuals with a history of MDD without current depressivesymptomatology.To our knowledge, this is the first study using FACS to measuredynamic affect-related shifts in a sample with a history of MDDand current depressive symptomatology. These data reinforce priorstudies that found that individuals suffering from depression re-sponded to positive stimuli with diminished responses. Our studyfound that even when an initial smile is elicited, individuals withcurrent symptomatology are more likely than asymptomatic per-sons to express negative AUs that are thought to control theiroriginal positive response (Ekman et al., 1988). Although priorwork has not been able to disentangle the impact of a history ofMDD from an individual’s current state (as patients typically wererecruited on the basis of current diagnosis), the present studyprovides preliminary evidences that it is the current state, ratherthan some stable tendency related to a history of MDD, that isdriving the response to positive stimuli.The momentary shifts in expression captured by FACS were notobserved in our postcomedy clip affect ratings. Nor did we findgroup differences in initial positive facial responses. The similarinitial responses to the joke may have been due to the effectivenessof our comedy clip in eliciting positive responses. Positive affec-tive ratings in the present study were higher than those found inprevious research using film clips (e.g., Rottenberg, Kasch, Gross,& Gotlib, 2002). Although we believe that this difference is due tothe effectiveness of our comedy clip, it remains possible that it isa result of the way in which depression is defined in the presentstudy. Increases in positive affect ratings following the comedyFigure 1.unilateral AU 14).Example of sequence from neutral (action unit [AU] 0) to smile (AU 12) to smile control (AU 12 ?807DEPRESSION AND RESPONSE TO COMEDY

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clip did not differ by group, suggesting similar response patternsbetween groups.The FACS data reported here are consistent with the view thatdepressive symptomatology can bias one toward negative inter-pretations of cues. It also provides a complement to work suggest-ing that currently depressed individuals have difficulty disengag-ing from negative stimuli (Gotlib et al., 2004) and work suggestingthat depression severity might be associated with aversive re-sponses to positive stimuli (Allen, Trinder, & Brennan, 1999). Ourdata also are consistent with views of depression that considernegative processing biases to be the result of well-learned routines,or heuristics (Robinson, Goetz, Wilkowski, & Hoffman, 2006).Alternatively, participants expressing smile controls simply mayhave been responding with ambivalence. Future research to probethese different sources of bias is indicated.Together with other research (e.g., Allen et al., 1999; Gotlib etal., 2004), our findings suggest that, under certain conditions,individuals with current depressive symptomatology may activelyprocess information in order to create affectively congruent re-sponses. This position differs from traditional conceptualizationsthat link depression to a passive style of responding (Beck, 1967).Accordingly, merely encouraging such patients to surround them-selves with positive stimuli or situations may not be sufficient intreatment if attention is not also paid to how these stimuli might beappraised. Behavioral treatments for depression that involve be-havioral activation recognize that individuals may not all find thesame stimuli reinforcing (Gable, Reis, & Elliot, 2000). With re-spect to laboratory research, use of idiographic approaches toassessing positive affect may prove valuable.Given the important communicative function of facial expres-sion (Fridlund, 1991), it is possible that the display of smilecontrols by depressed individuals may alienate them from others.This possibility may provide a clue toward understanding how thebehavior of depressed people may elicit hostility and rejectionfrom others (see Coyne, 1990).A number of limitations to this study must be taken into accountin interpreting its findings. Because most of the participants in-cluded in the sample were in their 20s, it is possible that some ofthose classified without a history might develop MDD later inadulthood. Regarding our sample, a no history ? current groupwas not included in the analyses due to its small sample size. Thus,we were unable to contrast the effects of current symptomatologyamong individuals with a history of MDD by comparing a nohistory ? current group with the history ? current group. More-over, the majority of participants in the history-no-current (77%)and history ? current (78%) groups were diagnosed with MDDprior to age 16. Because early onset depression is associated withpoor adult outcome compared with later onset depression (e.g.,Lewinsohn, Clarke, Seeley, & Rohde, 1994), future research isneeded to determine how well our findings generalize to individ-uals with later onset depression.In addition, use of a self-reported measure of depressive symp-tomatology can be problematic. First, rather than strictly measur-ing depressive symptomatology, the BDI may represent a moreglobal measure of negative affect. Second, any BDI cut-off scoreis arbitrary. Thus, results could change with the use of differentcut-off scores. It also is possible that the BDI cut-off scoresfunction differently in those with and without a history of MDD.More generally, it remains unclear whether the observed pattern ofsmile controls would be maintained in response to other types ofemotion inductions (e.g., unpleasant and neutral stimuli).The present data suggest that affective reactions in individualswith a history of MDD with and without current symptomatologyare more likely to unfold differently over time than in asymptom-atic “healthy” persons. Future research using other techniques(e.g., brain imaging) may provide further support for the conclu-sion that depression is associated with a complex controllingresponse to positive information.This research represents an initial attempt to use a dynamicmeasure of affect-related expression to examine the unfolding ofemotion in individuals with depressive symptomatology. Moregenerally, this study highlights the utility of integrating basicresearch in emotion with the study of affective disorders. Suchresearch holds promise for improving understanding of mecha-nisms underlying depression, while also providing a fertile samplefor investigating emotional volatility. Microanalysis of such rap-idly changing affect-related expressions may yield new insightsinto theories of human emotion.ReferencesAbramson, L. Y., & Alloy, L. B. (1981). Depression, non-depression, andcognitive illusions: A reply to Schwartz. Journal of Experimental Psy-chology, 110, 436–447.Allen, N. B., Trinder, J., & Brennan, C. (1999). Affective startle modula-tion in clinical depression: Preliminary findings. Biological Psychiatry,46, 542–550.Ambadar, Z., Schooler, J. W., & Cohn, J. F. (2005). Deciphering theenigmatic face: The importance of facial dynamics in interpreting subtlefacial expressions. Psychological Science, 16, 403–410.American Psychiatric Association. (1980). Diagnostic and statistical man-ual of mental disorders (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: Author.American Psychiatric Association. (1987). Diagnostic and statistical man-ual of mental disorders (3rd ed., rev.). Washington, DC: Author.American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical man-ual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.Beck, A. T. (1967). Depression: Clinical, experimental, and theoreticalaspects. New York: Hoeber.Beck, A. T., Steer, R. A., & Farbin, M. G. (1988). Psychometric propertiesof the Beck Depression Inventory: Twenty-five years of evaluation.Clinical Psychology Review, 8, 77–100.Block, J., & Colvin, C. R. (1994). Positive illusions and well-beingrevisited: Separating fiction from fact. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 28.Cohn, J. F., & Ekman, P. (2005). Measuring facial action by manualcoding, facial EMG, and automatic facial image analysis. In J. A.Harrigan, R. Rosenthal, & K. Scherer (Eds.), Handbook of nonverbalbehavior research methods in the affective sciences (pp. 9–64). NewYork: Oxford University Press.Coyne, J. C. (1990). Interpersonal processes in depression. In G. L. Keitner(Ed.), Depression and families (pp. 31–54). Washington, DC: AmericanPsychiatric Press.Davidson, R. J. (2000). Anxiety, depression, and emotion. New York:Oxford University Press.Ekman, P. (1993). Facial expression and emotion. American Psychologist,48, 384–392.Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1978). Facial Action Coding System. PaloAlto, CA: Consulting Psychology Press.Ekman, P., Friesen, W. V., & Hager, J. C. (2002). The Facial ActionCoding System. Salt Lake City, UT: Research Nexus, Network ResearchInformation.Ekman, P., Friesen, W. V., & O’Sullivan, M. (1988). Smiles when lying.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 414–420.808REED, SAYETTE, AND COHN

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"Much research using FACS has focused on the occurrence and AU composition of different expressions (Ekman and Rosenberg, 2005). For example, smiles that recruit the orbicularis oculi muscle (i.e., AU 6) are more likely to occur during pleasant circumstances (Ekman et al., 1990, Frank et al., 1993) and smiles that recruit the buccinator muscle (i.e., AU 14) are more likely to occur during active depression (Reed et al., 2007, Girard et al., 2013). A promising subset of research has begun to focus on what can be learned about and from the intensity of expressions. "

[Show abstract][Hide abstract]ABSTRACT: Both the occurrence and intensity of facial expressions are critical to what the face reveals. While much progress has been made towards the automatic detection of facial expression occurrence, controversy exists about how to estimate expression intensity. The most straight-forward approach is to train multiclass or regression models using intensity ground truth. However, collecting intensity ground truth is even more time consuming and expensive than collecting binary ground truth. As a shortcut, some researchers have proposed using the decision values of binary-trained maximum margin classifiers as a proxy for expression intensity. We provide empirical evidence that this heuristic is flawed in practice as well as in theory. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts when it comes to estimating smile intensity: researchers must take the time to collect and train on intensity ground truth. However, if they do so, high reliability with expert human coders can be achieved. Intensity-trained multiclass and regression models outperformed binary-trained classifier decision values on smile intensity estimation across multiple databases and methods for feature extraction and dimensionality reduction. Multiclass models even outperformed binary-trained classifiers on smile occurrence detection.

"As a smile control, AU 24 may occur less often than AU 14 and other smile controls. In a variety of contexts, AU 14 has been the most noticed smile control [27] [61]. Little is known, however, about the relative occurrence of different smile controls. "

[Show abstract][Hide abstract]ABSTRACT: The relationship between nonverbal behavior and severity of depression was investigated by following depressed participants over the course of treatment and video recording a series of clinical interviews. Facial expressions and head pose were analyzed from video using manual and automatic systems. Both systems were highly consistent for FACS action units (AUs) and showed similar effects for change over time in depression severity. When symptom severity was high, participants made fewer affiliative facial expressions (AUs 12 and 15) and more non-affiliative facial expressions (AU 14). Participants also exhibited diminished head motion (i.e., amplitude and velocity) when symptom severity was high. These results are consistent with the Social Withdrawal hypothesis: that depressed individuals use nonverbal behavior to maintain or increase interpersonal distance. As individuals recover, they send more signals indicating a willingness to affiliate. The finding that automatic facial expression analysis was both consistent with manual coding and revealed the same pattern of findings suggests that automatic facial expression analysis may be ready to relieve the burden of manual coding in behavioral and clinical science.

"Thus, we were unable to determine whether emotional displays of Whites in our three-person interracial groups were directed toward Black or White group members. Fourth, consistent with our prior work (Reed et al., 2007), this study did not distinguish between smile controls that follow Duchenne smiles and those that follow " social smiles. " Finally, participants observed in this study were young and resided in a relatively diverse metropolitan area in the northeastern United States. "

[Show abstract][Hide abstract]ABSTRACT: Discomfort during interracial interactions is common among Whites in the U.S. and is linked to avoidance of interracial encounters. While the negative consequences of interracial discomfort are well-documented, understanding of its causes is still incomplete. Alcohol consumption has been shown to decrease negative emotions caused by self-presentational concern but increase negative emotions associated with racial prejudice. Using novel behavioral-expressive measures of emotion, we examined the impact of alcohol on displays of discomfort among 92 White individuals interacting in all-White or interracial groups. We used the Facial Action Coding System and comprehensive content-free speech analyses to examine affective and behavioral dynamics during these 36-min exchanges (7.9 million frames of video data). Among Whites consuming nonalcoholic beverages, those assigned to interracial groups evidenced more facial and speech displays of discomfort than those in all-White groups. In contrast, among intoxicated Whites there were no differences in displays of discomfort between interracial and all-White groups. Results highlight the central role of self-presentational concerns in interracial discomfort and offer new directions for applying theory and methods from emotion science to the examination of intergroup relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).